Chronicle

OnJuly 12 – August 5, 2016 lecture and discussion program"Jewish Days at the City Hall: Communities, Milieus and States in the 20th
Century Contested Cities" took place in Ratusha Restaurant (1, Rynok sq.)

The history of Europe in the 20th century is a history of crucial changes of territories, of borders, of ideas, of ideologies, and of people. This is of particular relevance for East and Сentral Europe, places of co-existence and interaction, of conflict and the blurring
of ethnic, religious and language diversity. These are areas which beheld big
political and social experiments determined and implemented through deportation,
displacement, repression, ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust. It is also that part of Europe which historians
define as ‘intersection’, ‘un-place’, ‘borderlands’, ‘bloody lands’, where big politics
were implemented, grave
crime committed and neighbors existed together. Within East and Central Europe there are numerous
cities which were living spaces with productive environments, the products of formerly
dynamic, ambitious and well-known centers of diverse cultures, cultures of
co-existence, competition and challenge. In the case of Lwów/לעמבערג/Lviv, it is
predominantly about its Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish cultures. This is why it
is important to debate and think, from the perspective of being in the center
of this City, about ways to write and speak about its complicated past. How do we think about and evaluate what
happened, and how significant it is to establish a dialogue in society about
the past and shape the vision of the future?

Participants of the second series of the lectures and discussions program, "Jewish Days at City Hall: Communities, Milieus
and States in the 20th Century
Contested Cities", invited the general public and visitors to the city to discuss selected topics and issues connected with the history
of cities, the culture of communities who were part of Lviv's past, and the
memory of them in modern society. The series of lectures presented the research
of historians, specialists in cultural studies, literary scholars and invite the
participants into the discussion of complicated and little known or seemingly
familiar stories of Lwów/לעמבערג/Lviv.

The general topic was the co-existence of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews before the Second World War.
We examined how to go beyond the
pattern of relations between the three largest ethnic groups. How do we show the importance of national and
ethnic aspects in the life of the city while accounting for complexity and
dissimilarity behind the descriptions? What
do researchers know about the positions and attitudes of different communities
towards each other? How did perceptions of
each other affect the relations on different levels, from politics to everyday
life? What was going on under the brutalizing
conditions of life due to occupation? What
are vectors and factors for escalation of violence?

The ten lectures presented research around two main topics of the 20th century: how did violence change cities, communities
and people, and; what was culture about in these societies in times of dramatic
change, escalation of tension, and even hatred? Additionally, discussions will consider the
capacity and role of culture in state and ideological projects which used cruel
and deadly policies in their implementation, and whether art and literature
were used to stimulate and legitimize violence or, vice versa, a place of
escape from violence?

The program concluded in city walks along the interwar literary and artistic Lwów/לעמבערג/Lviv designed by participants of the summer school "Jewish History, Common Past and
Heritage: Culture, Cities, Milieus". This was an opportunity to take a look at the diverse and multicultural life of the city since
the dawn of the 20th century until WWII. Stories about intersections, divisions, relations between people, places, events and texts will help transform the contemporary urban space into a place for interaction between the school
participants and visitors of the walks.